- Hannah

The Rainbow Conference
by Hannah Rockwell

                  Have you ever heard of a hostel? Do you know what it is, or what it’s for? Well, for Soraya Perez, it is a home away from home. Soraya is staying at the hostel at Seaside Farm in Homer, Alaska for the whole summer. “I’m here on my own. I read about two hostels when I got here, I went to the other hostel first. I got there and it was on sort of a busy street. It wasn’t what I had thought of when I thought of Alaska so I came here [to Seaside Farm] instead and I love it,” she said.
            When Soraya’s last contract ran out she began looking for a job in Alaska. She eventually found one on Craig’s List that would not only send her from Tulsa, Oklahoma all the way to Alaska, it would send her to the little fishing town of Homer. Soraya is putting her Massage Therapy degree to work at her job as a masseuse at a spa in Seward, Alaska.
            Although Soraya is working for a spa right now, she has started her own business called Therapeutic Outcall Massage by Soraya and hopes to be able to devote more of her time to that when her current contract ends in September. “I’m starting my own business in Homer but I think it could be throughout Alaska, I think it’s something I can take with me also,” Soraya said. She likes her job now, but wishes she could be more in charge. “I want to be my own boss, I don’t like having bosses,” she said. Soraya is not only interested in massage.
            Eventually she hopes to incorporate yoga into her company as well. She is going to go to Australia to attend a yoga school to become more knowledgeable and hopefully feel qualified to teach yoga. “Eventually I might incorporate it into my business, but right now I don’t feel worthy to be a yoga instructor. Maybe after the training I will, but if I don’t I wouldn’t dare be a teacher,” Soraya said.
            Before she started massage school, or even thought about starting her own business, Soraya spent time traveling the world. She went to Hawaii, San Francisco, and Central America where she stayed in hostels. While traveling she worked random jobs, looked for massage schools, and attended the World Rainbow Conference. “The second time I went to Central America I went to Costa Rica to the World Rainbow Conference. The rainbow tribe is a group of people of all different ages and races and nationalities and such. They believe in a prophecy that says a ‘rainbow tribe’ will emerge some time in history and go back to living in the old way,” she said. This was the first conference Soraya had been to, but she plans on going back. She liked staying in the hostels she found in all of the different places, and liked the people she met at the conference. “You meet great people in hostels, nice people. One of the girls who is staying here with me, Charlotte, was nice enough to make my posters for my business for me a few weeks ago,” Soraya said.
            Soraya wanted to come to Alaska to continue finding adventure and new, interesting people, but what she found instead was a beautiful place, and somewhere to maybe call home in the future. “I wasn’t considering staying before I came here, but I am now. I love it so much now,” she said.