Welcome to Maracooya
My blog is the fruit of my passions:
Languages, nutrition, yoga, gardening, permaculture and the environment.
Welcome to my blog
Throughout my life, I have had many interests, which I have explored in depth by reading hundreds of books and pursuing further education. While studying, I went through a lot of trial and error, finally finding satisfactory answers to my questions and moving on to the next passion. As you will see, my passions build on and complement each other. Some of them have ended, most are still alive and have stabilized, the latest ones are burning fiercely, and you will have the chance to live them with me. Lucky you!
My Passion Timeline
1996 – Languages and Translation
In high school I started learning Spanish, Italian and German in books. It was my favourite hobby. Then, I became a translator after a four-year degree. It is a profession that I still practice passionately!
1999 – Travel
I started travelling abroad in high school as a school trip in Europe, then with my spouse in Africa, Asia and Central America, and finally with my family in Panama, Costa Rica and Spain. That passion ended with the pandemic, because it became complicated to travel, and also because flying is not very good for our choking planet.
2008 – Motherhood
Being a mom is not necessarily a passion per se, but these bundles of joy take so much time and attention in the first years of their life that they certainly become the heart of our lives. My children made a substantial contribution to my personal growth. It is thanks to them that I became a better person!
2010 – Cooking and Nutrition
My passion for nutrition started during my second pregnancy. After my spouse’s green juice feast to increase his energy, our family’s diet shifted from a standard American diet to raw foodism, to vegetarianism for some and veganism for me, all of this to achieve optimal health. In order to make sure that we made the right decisions for our unconventional diet, I took a number of nutrition courses: Nutritherapy Practioner (CMDQ), Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate (eCornell) and Forks Over Knives Ultimate Cooking Course (Rouxbe).
2013 – Exercise and Yoga
My passion for health didn’t end with nutrition. To have a healthy body, it is not enough to eat well, you also have to move. I started doing yoga at an outdoor yoga class and was hooked. Then, I continued doing sun salutations every day and my strength and flexibility improved greatly. I even took a yoga teacher course online to be able to create my own tailored sequences.
2019 – Gardening and Permaculture
I never really had a green thumb. In kindergarten, the bean I planted in a styrofoam cup would never grow. It wasn’t until 2020 that I started gardening more seriously because… it was the pandemic, we were caught at home and I needed greenery. I realized that planting annual crops every year is a lot of work, so I started looking at edible perennials. In 2021, I took the online Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Geoff Lawton and began dreaming of creating a food forest. After all, there is nothing more fresh, local and nutritious than the produce of your own garden!
2022 – Environment and Climate Crisis
In the spring of 2022, I watched a documentary on Greta Thunberg, and it really opened my eyes to greenhouse gases and the urgency of the situation. If we want to continue living on Earth for a while and avoid the worst natural disasters, we must act now and adopt a sustainable way of life. This is my most recent and volatile passion. I’m learning things every day and I’m constantly trying to improve.