We certainly welcome single
guests and families but Casa Cares seems to lend itself particularly
well to groups who “make themselves at home”. April-May will be one of
the busiest periods of 2008. In April we welcomed Swiss Reformed Church
confirmands, a women’s meeting led by our pastor from Siena, a church
congregation from the historical Waldensian Valleys, and a meeting of
persons concerned with issues of homosexuality and Christian faith. The
two months were bridged with the presence of two work groups: art
students from a Swedish folk high school and German teachers of
religion.
Interspersed with visits of individual guests, May will
continue with the return of Italian midwives for training, a creativity
workshop led by a German couple, and the two-week graduate seminar in
Counseling and Guidance of Old Dominion University (Virginia, USA).
Sometimes this movement seems a bit hectic but once a group gets into
its routine, usually half pension (breakfast and evening meal) or full
pension, things settle down and we can enjoy their company.
Given the
diversity of the groups, some of our friends have noted how they envy
us living in the midst of all this interesting movement. We appreciate
what we have. Thankfully we also can appreciate an excellent staff.
Antoinette is semi-retired now. That is an unusual situation that she
will have to get used to after 23 years of full immersion, but she is
managing it well. The other four employees live off-campus and the five
volunteers live here. Right now this last group is composed of three
Germans, a Brazilian, and an American. Three of the five will be
leaving us the end of May when a parallel coming and going, that is,
parallel to that of the guests, will begin and continue for several
months until things calm down again with longer term volunteers in the
autumn.
Finally the weather has turned quite warm after weeks of grey and a good amount of rain. We understand why the guests do not usually like the cool and wet, but with the memory of the lack of precipitation in some of the previous years, we are happy to have snow and rain to help our surrounding natural world and to promise a good supply of water to carry us through the summer. Much preparation has been done in the garden and the first signs of the land’s production for the year we enjoy in the wild mint, which makes excellent tea. This is a time of year full of enthusiasm for the new season.
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