Can de la Grace

During our 3 months of language and culture study, we stayed at Can de la Grace, or Grace Camp. There were several different buildings sprawled out across the camp. A large tabernacle near the entrance was used once or twice while we were there...mostly reserved for camps and large gatherings. Behind the tabernacle was a cement pad which served as a basketball court. There was a shop and some storage sheds between the court and the dining hall where the Krulls stayed and where we cooked and ate our meals.
To the right of the dining hall was a round, palm branch roof, open-air gazebo-type structure where kids and teens hung out during the day and where others charged their cell phones at night. :) To the right of the gazebo were dorm rooms, so far just one story, but the roof suggests that there are plans to build higher. Another two story building also served as a dorm during camps. We stayed in the top part of a building just in front of the gazebo and there was another two story dorm building in front of that. To the left behind the kitchen was a cooking area where Todd helped install some larger industrial stoves, although they still cook with pots over a charcoal fire at times. Another nearby building houses the cooks when they have teams.
Beyond our building and the dorms was a wide-open cow pasture surrounded by some woods and on the back and side, a sugar cane field. Cane in that area seemed to be grown for making rum. There were many stills in the area. The property had several sweet orange trees, sour orange trees, and grapefruit trees. We had fresh juice nearly every night. Yum!
From the pasture you could get a clear view of Mt. Piyon (right). We intended to climb it (never did) but we enjoyed seeing it as a landmark all over the area.
Trash was burned and/or thrown down a steep embankment near the river behind the kitchen. Not so pretty... Down a little trail beside the cooking area was a pig sty and chicken coop made of tree branches woven together for a shelter. The pigs enjoyed our vegetable peelings. We really did not have scraps. Chickens roosted in the trees at night and roamed the camp during the day. Besides the pigs and chickens, there were cats, dogs, turkeys, goats, cows, a noisy donkey, lizards, spiders and even a snake. Horses loaded with sugar cane or sometimes just a rider would often cut through the property on the way to or from town.
For a while we had rats living in the loft above our rooms, making a terrible racket. Finally we caught one of the cats and let it loose up there one evening after the rats had outsmarted other traps. In just a matter of minutes she had caught one, so several other sibblings and the mother went scurrying out. We did not hear from them again, although on occasion we would see a tail hanging from the peak of the roof.
Jason and Willhelmina had a bat that would come and feast on mosquitos in the dining hall nearly every night. A couple times they even had a big spider on the mosquito net on their bed.