We had a great weekend. Another surprise visitor, Julian's cousin Jamie, who lives a couple hours away in Monteverde, Costa Rica, came down to hang out with us for the weekend. We went to a soccer game at the national stadium in San Jose. It was the biggest game of the year in Costa Rica, between the two best teams. Otto really enjoyed going to the game as he was a professional soccer player himself years ago.

The diet is still going great, we both feel fantastic and its becoming an enjoyable routine. We'll have a detailed description of what the diet entails and why in the upcoming blog, but for now here's an example of a salad we had the other day, featuring: lettuce, spinach, green beans, red pepper, sunflower sprouts, strawberries, golden raisins, almonds, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, sea salt, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil. 

We also created more!

Otto: "Intention"

Julian: "Intention"

Otto: "Tranquility" 

Julian: "Tranquility"

We had a surprise visitor to our little corner of the jungle yesterday. We were happy to find out after we moved in that a friend of our's from back home in New York is living just a half hour away from us working on her own project. She hung out for the afternoon, had salad and juice with us, and helped us work on our movie. 

Christine recorded Otto's endless epic stories while Julian made juice. 

More artwork happened too! Otto: "Abundance"

Julian: "Abundance" 

Yesterday was an epic day! It was our first day driving in Costa Rica. We successfully navigated the rush hour San Jose traffic without using a GPS. We were able to quickly and easily arrive at the office of Dr. Edgardo Maya for Otto's afternoon appointment without getting lost, drive across the city to the organic grocery store, and then get back to our house by sunset. It was supposed to be 1.5 hrs round trip for all the stops but it ended up being closer to 3 as the traffic was congested and chaotic, and we were unable to get onto the on-ramp for the highway as a result, so we got a wild and winding side tour of San Jose in the process circumnavigating the obstacles of one-way streets and unmarked exits to re-arrive at the highway and make our way to the Green Center grocery store. The amazing thing is that we had neither map nor GPS with us, but rather made our way by looking at google maps for 10 minutes or so before we left and remembering the random and unsigned turns from an hour long taxi ride 5 days before. We did however have confidence and purpose on our side, and the necessary navigational outcomes manifested themselves with adept and fluid synchronicity. Julian woke up yesterday a bit nervous about the whole day's driving agenda, but today is excited for more time driving our little stick-shift Suzuki Celerio around the city and countryside with impatient Tico driver's cutting in front of us, reggae bumping on the stereo, wind rushing through our hair, and smiles on our faces. 

The appointment with Dr. Maya was another endeavor in manifesting success against improbable odds. Dr. Maya's English is roughly on par with Julian's Spanish  - more or less non-functional  - yet through necessity of purpose, slow and focused discourse, and the sheer power of consciousness, we transcended these limitations to have a powerful and productive visit. It helped mucho that Dr. Maya's ability to read English was just fine and he was able to fully interpret Otto's medical records, and as we warmed up, his spoken English crawled out of the woodwork as did Julian's Spanish, which has never been studied but rather collected from a variety of short travel's in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Morocco, and reading signs in the subway in NYC. 

Dr. Maya specializes in bio-energetics, and has himself recovered from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (the same type of cancer that Otto has in his chest) and survived a further 30 years. Through measuring biological rhythms and energies, he was able to discern with freakish accuracy major life events, beginning in Otto's childhood, that have been the roots of his current physical condition. He explained that in traditional Chinese medicine, both lymphoma as an illness and the lungs as organs are associated with sadness. He interpreted that the lymphoma has its roots in the sadness in Otto's life, especially during his childhood in a refugee camp in WWII Austria and in relationship to his father who died in the war and he never met. Furthemore, he associated the lymphoma and its spread to other areas of the body to be associated with the consumption of wheat, which has been eliminated from Otto's diet since we arrived in Costa Rica. He predicted a positive outcome with Otto's cancers, and believes that the lifestyle and diet changes currently being addressed during this journey will prove the key to the successful outcome. He said that the cancer in fact does not worry him as too large an obstacle, but rather his focus for raising Otto's health will be addressing the Parkinson's Disease which ails him. This he said is the biggest health concern in his eye, and implored that Otto take his medications for Parkinson's with discipline as prescribed. (Otto frequently avoids taking them either due to forgetfulness or aversion to their side-effects) He also suggested Otto implement a large amount of papaya in to his diet, as papaya contains compounds that have been shown to strengthen and steady the nervous. system. Also white onions were prescribed to be consumed in great amounts as they are powerful in increasing the efficacy of the white blood cells, which are greatly affected by the lymphoma. Finally he predicted that Otto would not die from his cancers, but would rather die of a heart attack many years from now - a quick and relatively painless conclusion to magical life!

Saturday Afternoon in the Jungle: The Artist with Kale

Painting Theme #1: Green, as in the juice we drink, the jungle that surrounds us, photosynthesis, life, etc...

Otto's Green

Julian's Green

At Work!

Otto sitting at our kitchen table with his first batch of juice: kale, celery, chard, cucumber, parsley, pineapple, algae/seaweed powder, and coconut oil. And yes, our kitchen is an open air balcony in the jungle ;)