My Last Day in Asia

Well, my last full day in Asia has finally arrived. The trip has flown by really quickly. I can't believe I've been gone almost 3 weeks already. I wish I had more time to stay and work on some more projects but summer school and work is waiting when I get back. Today was a pretty good last day. I left early this morning to go out with M_ and his wife to help them in their village which is about 45 minutes out of town. They have done some work out there in the past and our game plan was to go and visit the elementary school and just see what happens. When we got out there they were having some program because some gov officials had given the school money and so the kids where doing some kind of thank you type of thing. It worked out really well because we got to make some good contacts with people in the local gov over here, which is always a big deal. We did some hanging out with a few of the teachers and they wanted us to go and teach English, so I got assigned to 5th grade. English, especially in the elementary schools, is very limited and since my local language is basically nonexistent I basically pointed at things, wrote them on the board and had the class repeat them back to me. The class was really good at doing things as a group but as soon as I started to single kids out and ask them simple things they got really shy. So I did a lot of talking. We talked about sports, brothers and sisters, pets, and we played "Is this big or small?" Somehow that took up all of the time. Actually I'm pretty sure I went over time by like 10 minutes and the teacher was just being nice and didn't stop me. It would have been nice to know because I was really reaching for things to talk about the last 5 minutes. We went and visited a family that M_ knew for a few minutes and then ate some lunch back at the school. M_ and I left lunch a little early and went and played basketball with a bunch of the kids. It was basically 2 on 20 but it was a lot of fun. The kids kept trying to get me to dunk the ball but they couldn't understand that I can't. They would want me to hold my arms up in the air and then they would oohh and awww because I was so tall. They couldn't imagine how a 6'1'' white guy couldn't dunk a basketball. We had a lot of fun though. Tonight the entire crew went out for a going away dinner. We had some really good food and it was a great chance to say goodbye to everyone. Afterwards A_ and her roommate and I went and walked around for a while looking for things to pack gifts in so that I can transport them back to the states. Afterwards we definitely did get some massages (and yes, that is the 3rd this week for those of you who are counting). Our legs were pretty tight after working in the fields yesterday and I figured since I have a 20 hour plane flight tomorrow I can spring for a $7 massage. So hopefully that will make the trip go a little smoother. Well I've got to jet. It is getting late here and I still haven't packed, which will be an adventure in itself, so I'd better go. See you all back in Texas!

The Most Random Day Yet

So as the title of this entry indicates, it has been a pretty random day out here. It started off pretty normal though. I went and ate lunch with some of the teachers that I had a few years ago when I studied out here for a summer. It was really good to get to catch up with them and I got offered a job at the school. They are needing some people to come out and teach English at the college. I gave her one of those "maybe"s that really meant that there is no way I'd want to do that job (but if anybody else is interested I'll put in a good word for you). After lunch I went out with A_ and K_'s wife out to A_'s village. Everybody out here has different places that they go and build relationships with people and so we went out basically to just hang out and see who we could meet. We walked around for a while and ended up at this little shop where a lot of people were hanging out. Basically these little corner shops are where everybody goes when they are not working and people are usually playing pool or mahjong. Mahjong is a tile game out here and it is HUGE. Generally everyone playing it is gambling, and since I can't really remember how the numbers on the tiles work, and therefore would lose a lot of money, I usually don't play. However, today out in the village they were playing and A_ was like "that's so cool!" after one of the games. At first I was just thinking that she had been living out here too long and was too easily impressed by stuff but turns out the tables these guys were playing on were some of the most high tech things I've ever seen. After a game you push a button and the middle of the table pops up and you push all the tiles into it. There is a tumbler inside that mixes up all the tiles and then turns them the right way (I'm still not sure how that part works), and then stacks them into rows. While the table is doing all this a slot in front of each player opens and a different set of tiles rises up so that you can play while the table is mixing them all up for you. The thing had lights and all sorts of other cool stuff. It is amazing what you can find out here in the middle of nowhere. So after the rain died down we left from the shop and went and helped some girl that A_ had met before plant corn. The lady has a 6 month old baby and needed a little help with planting the corn with the rest of her family. So we went out and our job was to scoop dirt with little rice bowls and cover up the corn that had been buried in the ground. They plant corn out here by making rows in the field, covering them with thin strips of plastic to keep the moisture in the ground, and then opening little holes where they drop in the seeds. So we did this for a few rows. While we were out there it started to pour rain and the girl we were with pointed over a few rows and everybody else who was planting was huddled under one of the strips of plastic that hadn't been buried yet. So the three of us squatted under this small piece of plastic with about 4 locals. I'm sure the people in the next field thought it was hilarious to watch. We worked in the field for a while longer and while we were out A_ took a break and sat on a piece of extra plastic with her friend and the baby. People over here can't really afford diapers so the babies wear crotchless pants. A_ was holding the baby for a while and then all of sudden the baby had a case of diarrhea and it got on A_'s pants leg. Luckily she wasn't holding the baby in her lap but just barely on her leg. After we finished with the field the father was putting things up and was like "what is this green stuff on the plastic? I got some of it on my arm." He was rubbing his arm in the grass trying to get it off when he found out what it was. They tried to get us to stay for dinner but we needed to get back, we had only planned on being there 2 hours and had been there about 5, so we headed back to town and then ate at a Thai place in town. The food was pretty different (I ate some purple rice out of a pineapple) but was really good. A_ and her old roommate and I spent the next three hours watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I give it two thumbs down! Way too long and the plot was everywhere. I got back to my hotel a little after midnight and the guy working the desk had locked everything up and was asleep, so I had to wake him up to get in. I don't think he was too mad at me though. I'm usually pretty cool about waiting when he is playing around on the internet (which is ALL the time), so I think he kind of likes me.

Salty Roots

Today was the last of the down days for my trip. For being a down day, I was out doing a lot of stuff. Mostly just hanging out with people though. There is a lot of that out here. i was going to go and meet some of my old teachers this morning. I needed to be there around 10:15 am, so I took off walking up the hill to get there at about 10. Well turns out it is a lot longer walk than I remember and they changed some of the bus routes that take you there, so I ended up getting there at about 10:30. They had all gone back to class but I got to hang out with A_ and C_ for a few minutes while they were on break. I talked to some of the other people up there that I knew and we set up going to lunch tomorrow, so I'll get to see them all then. C_ and I decided to hang out later that night and A_ was done with class so we went and grabbed some lunch and some smoothies. There is this great smoothie place in town where they mix up all the fresh fruit right in front of you, and for under $1 it is hard to beat. We hung out there for about an hour and mostly talked about the dumb things we'd gotten into with Mo back in college. After that I did a little DVD shopping. I've found out that if you have a couple of hours to kill it is a great thing to do because the shops out here have tons of them and they are in no particular order, so it takes forever to find what you want. Later tonight I went and hung out with C_. He and a group of locals were eating dinner, so I met up with them. It was this little place right across the street from his apartment and it was pretty good stuff, except I didn't really care for the fish. Just something about a whole fish coated in spicy peppery stuff didn't really do it for me. That and the fact that we are hundreds of miles from water didn't really make it seem like a great idea to eat. But I gave it a go just so I could say I did. We went back to C_'s apartment and hung out with some of the guys that are living out here. We got out the guitars and started playing around. Turns out C_ is in a band and the boy can play. So we played around for a while and then called it a night.

Planting Day

So I'm feeling pretty good right now. Tonight I took A_ and her roommate to go and get massages, yes that would be my second in three days for those of you who are counting. They wanted to go to some other place that did this foot massage thing and then a whole body massage. It was pretty great. I mean, what's there not to like about somebody rubbing on your back for 2 hours. We got the hot stones treatment, the Tibetan foot thing, the works. And for under $10 I decided to take one for the team and go. Earlier today K_ and I drove out to a village and spent the day working on a farming project that he is starting up. One of the things that they are trying to do out here is set up a nonprofit type of company. Last year he went to this village and tried out some new corn planting techniques that were very successful. This is allowing the people to grow better crops and hopefully make more money. Today's project was to construct a tree nursery and plant some acacia trees. A lot of the people out here get land from the gov and they can use them for whatever they want. The problem is that a lot of the land is up on the mountain so it isn't great for crops and most of the families don't have enough people to work that extra land. So K_ has the idea of growing these trees that are easy to manage, can grow on the mountain, and can be sold for profit. The game plan is to try and get this test nursery going and if everything is successful, start up a large one and then transplant the trees to the extra land the villagers have. We've figured that if half the villagers in a small village do this it can bring an extra $1000 USD to that village, which is a huge impact. So anyway, we went out and talked to one of the farmers that K_ worked with last year and he let us use some of his land for the nursery. It was a good trip (and even better since I didn't have to eat a weird lunch or spend the night out there).

Sunday

Well I've basically got a game plan for the rest of my trip. I'll be flying out on Friday to head back to the States and it really has flown by pretty quickly. This morning the entire team met for a few hours for study and we kind of hashed out schedules and figured out who I'd be going with the other days I'm here. I think the rough schedule is that Monday I'll be going with K_ to do some corn planting project in a village, Tuesday is an off day, Wednesday afternoon I'll be going with A_ (formerly known as Stinky) out to her village, and Thursday I think M_ and I are supposed to do something in a village. I was starting to lose my focus there at the end so I'll just figure it out later in the week. I do know that from now on out there will only be day trips, which means no more sleeping out in the villages. It isn't that I hate sleeping in the villages, it just gets kind of old after a while. You have to eat bad food, sleep on a bed that consists of a wooden board, get attacked by flies, and you wake up at dawn, or before if the rooster decides he wants to get up early. That is another thing I've realized on this trip, roosters don't crow at the sun, they basically just crow whenever they feel like it. Anyway after the meeting we went and got lunch at this Muslim restaurant. It was really good, quite possibly the best meal that I've had since I've been out here. The rest of the afternoon I hung out with A_ and her roommate. The team decided to have a get-together that night so we volunteered to cook most of the dinner. We cooked Parmesan chicken (from scratch), marinara sauce (from scratch), and made homemade ice cream (in an ice cream maker that I hauled halfway around the world). It all turned out really well. We all had dinner and played a few games and then called it a night. It was a pretty busy day but it was still slow enough to be a break. I'm feeling pretty rested up and ready to tackle the last of the trip.

Row Row Row Your Boat

Well I survived the trip back. It actually wasn't all that bad. Except for the fact that it hurt to move my legs at all. Doing all that hiking is a beating. My quads were really tight this morning, but I felt better when I looked over and everyone else was really sore too. We hiked down along the river for about 2 hours and because the weather held up we got to take a boat across. I'm glad that we got to take the boat instead of the 10 hour hike out; however it was a little weird to have the guys keep asking me if I could swim. I'm not a fan of trying to swim across the 3rd largest river in the world right before it gets to the flood stage. We did luck out in that the leader of the village took the hike with us and told the guys who own the boat to take us across. C_ warned me that the boat was pretty old and worn out, but it wasn't that bad. It was just interesting trying to cram 7 people in the small rowboat. After about a 10 minute trip across the river and another 20 minutes of hiking we made it up to a hydro-electric plant and waited for the van to come and pick us up. The van was running late so one of the nationals suggested that we go swim for a while in a stream. The hydro-electric plant runs off of one of the streams that flows down into the river and there is a nice pool of water right under the bridge. Since it was about 80 degrees and we'd been hiking all day, I was all about it. We all stripped down and jumped in for about 20 minutes. One of the guys decided he wanted to take a bath; which was kind of awkward, especially since he was upstream of me. But as soon as we got out the van made the trip around the corner of the mountain and we made the hour and a half drive back. So I'm feeling pretty great right now. The stomach settled down yesterday afternoon and when I got back to town I went and got some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Normally I'm all about sticking just to the ethnic food, but after spending several days in villages I just needed to eat something American. Normally KFC ranks pretty low on the food chain back home, but it sure did taste amazing today. After a shower and a nap C_ and I went out to eat and then got the ol' hour long massage. The quote of the night had to be during dinner C_ and I were talking about family and I told him that he and my brother had the same name and it was spelled the same way. C_ asked if my brother was mean and I said "yeah, he can be." He replied "you know why? Because he has a girl's name." I thought it was funny. The massage was pretty great. I'm pretty sure that was the best $7.50 I've ever spent. I've only had one other real massage and it was the last time that I was out here. I kind of had a bad experience (let's just say they were interested in giving more than massages), and I haven't really been back since. But this thing was pretty great after a long hike. We were both sitting there groaning once they started working on our legs though. I'm thinking that the best remedy for this is to go back again tomorrow.

Building a Dam

So today I built a dam. Well, I helped anyway. We hiked out to our site from the village, which took about an hour, and started clearing out the area. We had been out there for about an hour when almost everyone from the village showed up to help. We had done some of the clearing out and cleaning up the rock but once they showed up we basically stepped back and let them do most of the work. It is kind of a weird thing going out there to do the work and then letting someone else doing it but C_ explained that is the goal of their community transformation projects. One of the key things is getting the people to not view this as a hand out but to get them involved and have them take ownership of the project. We are basically facilitators and provide help when needed. We built the dam where two streams flow together from the mountains in this small ravine. We basically gathered together a bunch of rocks from the area, stacked them up, added a pipe and a lot of concrete and there you go, you have a dam. It ended up being about 3 1/2 foot high and about 10 foot long. It looked pretty good, much better than we could have done on our own. As C_ aptly put it "if there is one thing these people know how to do, it is build a wall." I think we could have finished the project a lot sooner but all the locals took like a 2 hour lunch break and didn't get back to work until it started raining. It rained quite a bit but quit right before we hiked home. I'm glad I didn't have to do a ton of the work today because I haven't been feeling so hot. I think I ate or drank something last night that didn't sit so well. The combination of that and sleeping on a wooden mattress meant that I got about 2 hours of sleep last night. The food here hasn't been bad, just not much of it. We've had rice and then the random piece of meat thrown in a pot to boil. I've been eating but not getting a ton of nutrition. There is nothing more fun than running across mountain goat trails when you're tired. And I'm not kidding about the mountain goat trails either. Today we literally had to scare the goats so they would move out of the way and we could get by. The trail wouldn't be as bad if there weren't places where there had been rock slides. There are some points where you basically have to run for a few feet and just keep moving so that you don't slide off the cliff. Physically it has been pretty demanding. I'm not as sore or tired as when I've run the White Rock, but that is different because you just run and you can put your mind on coast. This takes a lot of focus and paying attention to what you are doing because you can literally fall off a cliff and die. But back to the dam... The end goal of this dam is to deliver water to the village that we are staying in. After the rainy season is over C_ and some other guys are going to come back out and connect a bunch of pipe about 2 miles and run it to the village. He was telling me that during the dry season they can only water their crops about once every two weeks, and hopefully this dam will more than double their water. I also got to see our friend that we brought with us share with a bunch of the locals. While they were working on the dam he got up and started telling jokes or something and within 30 seconds he had the entire crowd listening to his every word. He was speaking in their local language and I couldn't really understand much of what he was saying, but when he talks he has everybody listening to him. When we got back tonight at dinner we found out that we're getting to take the boat home unless something happens, which will be great. Without the boat, the trip back might take us two days. And how often can you say that you took a rowboat across the 3rd largest river in the world?

The Longest Hike Ever

So I've survived day one of building our dam. And after the hike that we had I'm thinking that "survived" fits it pretty well. I met up with some guys this morning and we took off out to this remote village. I was kind of a last minute addition to the team and didn't really find out a lot of the details until today. Basically we're building a dam for a couple of gov't officials that live in our town. They are from this village and they don't have any water out there, so to help them out, and to help us build some relationships with them, we have volunteered to build the dam. I'm going with a guy, C_, who is doing the same kind of thing I am but full time out here. We've also got three nationals going with us. One of them is the leader of a home c. The guy is pretty stinking impressive. I don't really understand much of what he says but he uses a lot of gestures and everyone is always laughing. The basic gist of the trip is that we drove out of town, spent another hour driving down a dirt road to a small village and then started hiking. The hike took a little under 5 hours to go the 10 miles. The first half of it wasn't so bad but the last half was brutal. Most of the trekking was on small mountain goat trails that were about 2 foot wide. On one side you had the mountain, and on the other there was a cliff. There were a few spots where we had to rock climb down and did a lot of sliding. At one point I made a comment to C_ that the guys we were going with must be half Sherpa and then he informed me that their people were actually from that region and were sort of related. So that figures. These guys were basically running down the sides of the mountains and we were just trying to keep up. The scenery was amazing, unfortunately I couldn't look at much of it for fear of falling off a cliff. I basically spent most of the trip looking about 3 feet in front of me and only looking up when we took a break. We dropped off our supplies and then hiked out and got to our village. The people we are staying with live right on the Yangtze River. It is pretty remote out here. Most of the people who live out in the villages are very poor, but these people are poorer than anyone else I've met. The lack of money is one of the reasons why they don't have any roads or ways to get to their village. They do have a little electricity which powers one light bulb that we hung outside of our room. Other than that, not much going on. One of the big things while we're out here is that we need the weather to hold up. It was a great day today, kind of hot (low 80's I think), but we need it to keep from raining. If it rains it'll make the trails pretty impossible to get across and also it'll mess up our plans to get out. I found out that the thing about leaving is that we can cut our hike down to about 4 miles and take a boat across the river and then just have a van pick us up at a hydroelectric plant. So that is best case scenario. When we got started the leader of the area said we couldn't take the boat because the rainy season has started and the river is too high, but the leader of the village we're in said it should be ok. So we're going to bed early, I've realized there isn't anything to do once it gets dark and you have no electricity, and then getting up and hiking to build our dam.

The Last of the Down Days

Well it looks like today was the last of the slow days. I met with the guy who runs a lot of stuff out here today for lunch and turns out I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days. The game plan is that I'm meeting a guy, who turns out is really good friend with a girl I went to school with at HSU (talk about a small world), and we're going to go work on a dam or something way out in the sticks. I'm not 100% sure where it'll be but I've been told it involves a bus ride or something and then a 10 mile hike down to the site that we are working at. We'll spend a day or two down there and then head back. If we get lucky I think we can basically hitch a ride back up with someone, but if we aren't lucky, and from the sound of it odds are we won't be, we'll have to hike back up the 10 miles. So that'll be an adventure to say the least. I'm pretty excited about it though. We'll be working on some stuff that is like what I would like to be doing over here and it'll be a really good learning experience. Can't say I'm all that excited about the hike though. I'm not exactly in marathon shape anymore and living on rice and pig liver for the past couple weeks isn't exactly doing much for my energy. Luckily I've had a few days to veg out and catch up on sleep. I went over to my friends house after we figured all this out at lunch to borrow some more gear and ended up getting ambushed by his 3 oldest kids (they have 4, and the oldest just turned 6). Anyways, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon hanging out with them and catching up on my Peter Pan and Bernstein Bears reading. It was a good break. I spent the night hanging out with Stinky and her roommate. I'm going to have to change her nickname because turns out she can actually read this. I thought she couldn't because I was told you can't read blogs out here. I can't actually read the blog even though I'm writing it, basically I just get an error screen when I click on it. Gotta love no freedom of press. So from now on I'll just refer to her as A_, which I think is way less fun but it'll work. Any way, the three of us walked around for a while and got some gelato, which not going to lie, was pretty amazing. And I don't think it was one of those "haven't had good food in a while amazing", I think it would have been amazing in the states too. There has been a lot of change out here since I was here 3 years ago and there are a lot more western types of stuff. Well any way, I need to crash because tomorrow is going to be a LONG day. I'll post some stuff from my journal on here after I get back on Saturday or Sunday.

More Down Time

So basically I've had a lot of down time between yesterday morning and tonight (it is Tuesday night here). I've been finding stuff to do though. Last night I went over to Stinky's apt and her, her old roommate, and I all hung out. We had some chicken and veggies and watched a movie. Today has been pretty much wide open. I had a chance to do some shopping and basically wandered around Old Town all day. The town I'm staying in has a large preserved part of town that is all the old style of architecture and there are no cars or bikes, only walking. It is a nice place to spend the afternoon just checking out the shops. I met up with Stinky tonight and her and one of the local C's ate dinner with me. I had met the girl that she brought on our last trip here a few years ago and she became a C then. It was really good to get to catch up with her and see how much she's grown. We ate dinner at a Muslim restaurant. For some reason they were out of what we wanted to order so we ordered this other thing. They brought out something totally random and we tried to explain it to the guy but we ended up just eating it anyway. I thought it was actually pretty good. It was this dumpling stew kind of thing and then we had the whole spicy lamb bbq on a stick thing. Basically if you dump enough spice on anything it'll taste ok. I've been told that in developed countries the food is more bland because they traditionally have better quality meat, whereas in the less developed world stuff is way spicy to cover up the taste of the meat. So stuff here generally has a little kick to it. I'm also realizing that there isn't much to do other than walk around. We did go down to the town square and got on these scooter types of things. They are built like old school scooters but instead of having one board that you stand on they have two that will go in and out. The way you make the scooter go is to pump your legs in and out and you move forward. These things also weren't built for wheelies. I tried one and ended up eating it. Don't worry, Stinky had my camera and got a video. The rest of the night was spent walking around Old Town and doing some gift shopping for people. Her roommate had a bunch of things that she picked up (and I think I'm going to end up taking back to the states) and I think I got most of my gift shopping done. As far as my plans for the rest of the week, they are still a little up in the air. I talked to my friend out here who is in charge and we are supposed to meet for lunch tomorrow. He said that he is trying to get some thing together for the rest of this week for me but it still isn't a for-sure kind of thing yet. Hopefully we'll know by tomorrow, otherwise there might be a lot of just doing things around town until I go out again this weekend. I'm not going to complain about the downtime though. It has been nice to get some rest and just have a laid back schedule for once. The past couple days are forcing me to slow down some (since I can't really drive, or go anywhere, or meet anyone). It is a little like a forced vacation for a couple days. So I'm going to live it up. Since I've had so much down time I have had a chance to reflect on some of the things I saw this weekend. Since there is a little bit of a class element to this trip and I need to take a look at some environmental issues, here are some things that I've noticed from my trip to the village:

• Toilets - basically these things needed a lot of work. The first thing that I would do is to move the toilet from being uphill from the house to downhill. It rains so much there that basically everything gets flushed out and ends up in a big pool that is right next to the house, which eventually ends up going through the courtyard. M_ and I were talking about possible ways to improve their toilet system and having the standard flushing isn't really possible. They don't really have the capability of doing that out there and they also need to use the poop as fertilizer (yeah... using human waste is the preferred way of fertilizing out here). So M_ had this idea of using a two chambered system where you could have two holes dug out under the toilet. Basically you use one and when it becomes full you cover it up and slide the toilet over onto the next one. They would need to be kind of deep to help keep out the flies and he said there is a certain way to rig a pipe into it in order to funnel the smell out. So that is something that I can try and look into when I get back home.
• Animals - It seems kind of obvious but it would keep the house a lot more sanitary if they just put the animals into pens. The chickens poop in the house and the dogs are always getting into everything. At one point during the weekend we were watching T.V. and first a chicken came in the room, a few minutes later a dog came in, and then a little girl walked in carrying a cat. A lot of the sanitation problems that they have could be controlled by keeping the animals in a certain area.
• Flies - I don't think I've ever been around more flies in my life. I think a lot of this can be cleared up by fixing the toilet issue. Probably the biggest problem is that no one understands about flies carrying diseases and people don't even notice them crawling all over food laying out and things like that. Education really is the biggest key to people understanding all of this. Also some things like fly paper or some kind of traps coud cut down on them. Luckily the people are high enough in the mountains that there are not any mosquitoes.
• Crops - I talked to our friend about the crops we were planting and he said that he only adds fertilizer and waters them. I've already mentioned that they use human fertilizer, but I don't see convincing them to use anything else anytime soon. They could probably use some pesticides though. On a lot of the tobbacco there were small bugs all over them and they looked kind of chewed up, but our friend swore that the bugs didn't eat the plants. So a cheap pesticide and some different fertilizer could probably help things a little.
• Water - I've tried to come up with some ways that they can have a better water source but water really doesn't seem to be a huge issue out there. They have running water in the courtyard and they basically take all of their water and boil it. M_ and I have tried to think of a few cheap ways of getting cleaner water. One of the things that could be used would be a rain catch. It rains A LOT out here and the people have a rain catch but it basically is a hose coming off of the gutter from the roof. The water isn't exactly clean. Another thing that M_ came up with is to make a type of container that heats quickly in the sun light and keep the water in there all day so that it basically boils out everything. The main problem is that it is always so cloudy.

Anyways, those are some things that I have thought of so far. If any of you amatuer enviromentalists come up with any great solutions please let me know.

The Best Shower Ever

I don't think I've ever looked more forward to a shower in my life. We actually got back to town pretty quickly this morning. The game plan was that the bus was going to pick us up at about 7:30 am, which out here usually means 10, but it actually got there at about 7:15 and we were on the road by 7:30 on the dot. I was glad to leave early. I wasn't sleeping anyway. There was some kind of a cat fight last night at about 1am and the rooster has woken me up at 5am every day we've been out here. I always thought roosters crowed at the sun coming up but turns out that isn't true because it was still dark for another hour after this one started doing its thing. So we packed up and got into the bus, which actually turned out to be a mini-minivan. I think there were six of us packed into it. But somewhere along the way we picked up another 3 or 4 people and dropped another off. Anyways, it was crowded. I wasn't sure if the thing could make it through all the mud but turns out the thing is 4 wheel drive and only got stuck once but not for long. We got back around 10:30 and took an early lunch. It turns out the burger place was closed but we went and got a pizza at this other resturant. It is amazing how a pizza, a bathroom and a hot shower can make you feel human again. I've had a lot of down time this afternoon (so I've been catching up on this thing) and I think I'm going to hang out with my friend "Stinky" and her old roomate. I'm thinking that we should spring for one of those famous $7 - hour long massages that are out here. My back is a little tight from all that hole digging. The hotel that I am at is really nice. It is an N. style type of place like the one that I stayed at in the village but WAY cleaner. The place is actually very clean. My room is pretty tiny but it is nice. I've got a semi-soft bed, a bathroom with a western toilet, and a hot shower. Granted the shower is just a shower head that is in the middle of the bathroom but it has really hot water. It is amazing how skewed your view of luxury becomes after only a week. It is crazy to think that I've been gone almost a week and have less than 2 weeks left over here. I'm glad the trip is pretty short. It is long enough to get some things done but not too long to where I miss a lot back home. It is strange how things don't feel rushed at all over here. It is a different pace to life and there is a lot of down time. I've kind of been doing some things on my own but it is hard to do a lot of work when you don't speak the language. The only other option to wandering around solo is to have my friend over here baby sit me, which isn't really an option, so I'm going to enjoy my next day or so of downtime and maybe do some shopping. There is this nice outfitter store down the street and I can always go for a new northface jacket.

The Fly Lords

So being out in the village is starting to wear me out a little bit. Other than the bad food/no toilet/no shower our sleeping conditions aren't really the best either. Luckily we have our own room with two beds. The beds basically consist of a board laying across two wood horses with a blanket on top. There is also some other stuff in the corner of our room that I don't really want to go through. I'm thinking if I do I might find something alive. We've been sleeping in our clothes every night and I don't really get under the covers all that much. I've also been keeping my extra shirt (yeah... I've been wearing the same clothes the past 3 days) on top of the pillow to hopefully keep some of the nastiness off my head. They did clean our beds when we got here. I was luck enough to have mine already made, but I saw the granny clean M_'s and that didn't exactly make me feel great. Basically she lifted up the sheet until all of the debris (M_ thinks it was rat poop but I'm telling myself it was just dirt) fell into the floor. We've managed to keep most of the flies out of our room by keeping the door closed all day. The problem is that granny keeps going into the room to get stuff and she'll leave the door open and then the flies will be back again. And I don't just mean a few flies, I mean hundreds of flies. I've never been around so many flies in my life. Nobody here seems to care or notice but whenever you go into any room in the house you'll be accompanied by at least 500 or so flies. If you just sit and listen you can hear them (strangely it is the same kind of sound you get out of a seashell). I've found myself hanging out in the kitchen next to the fire because the smoke at least will keep them off of you. We worked in the field for a few hours this morning but had to quit just before lunch because of the rain. It has been raining every day here and the field turns to complete mud. Today it rained all afternoon and M_ and I watched some Brian Regan on the Ipod for a couple hours. We later went and watched a J film with some of the road workers. It actually led to a couple of conversations and a few of the guys were asking some good questions. We went back out to the field at about 7pm and worked for another hour and a half until it got too dark. There weren't any fun stories about food today. We had eaten most of the pork; however we did have leftovers for lunch. I'll be the first one to tell you that it is true that pig head definitely tastes better the 2nd day. The good thing about today is that we also had some veggies to go with it so I tried to load up on potatoes and bean curd (which I've actually grown to like). So other than our friends wife dropping pig head and liver into my bowl, which she does a lot..., the food today has been pretty decent. I am very excited about going home. We are supposed to leave in the morning and M_ and I have made plans to go grab a burger once we get back to town. Things in town have changed a lot the past few years and they have a few more western types of things and one of them is an English pub that serves good hamburgers. I don't think I have ever looked more forward to a shower and a good meal.

The Lord of the Flies

Today I feel like I've had a couple of invaluable experiences.

1. Learn how to plant tobacco
2. Help slaughter a pig

Ok, so they weren't really things that made my 43 things list but they were interesting none the less. We got up early this morning because our friend told us that some of the road workers were wanting to buy some pork and that we were going to kill the pig. So, not knowing the next time we'd have a chance to slaughter a pig, we volunteered to help. We went and pulled the pig out of his pen (which is funny because the pig was the only barnyard animal here that was actually in a pen). Really we didn't do much other than watch the 5 guys go and pull him out. It was a pretty big pig, around 250 lbs., so it took about 5 guys to get it out. Once it got pulled out it realized what was going on and it started going crazy. The guys got a rope around its head and put it up on this table (once again in the middle of the courtyard) and our friend we are staying with stuck a knife in its throat. Eventually he hit the jugular and blood started coming out as if someone turned on a water hose. It was pretty stinkin' gross; however it was more gross that they were putting the blood in a big bowl so that they could use it for food later. Then we threw the pig in a big barrel of hot water to help make the hair come off. The guys started getting meat cleavers and shaving the skin off of the pig. The next thing I know one of the guys hands M_ and myself one and we are shaving the skin off of this dead pig. We did this for a few minutes and then breakfast was ready so we went and ate. I was telling M_ about how it was weird that all the road workers were just sitting there eating breakfast as they were killing that pig as if nothing was going on. M_ noticed that they were cutting off the head, so we grabbed our breakfast and went back outside to watch. Irony is funny like that I guess. Eventually they gutted the entire thing and saved every piece of it. M_ spent a little time squeezing poop out of the intestines and helping to turn them inside out so that one of the locals could make blood sausage out of it. I wasn't a huge fan of that (since there really wasn't any place to wash up) and I'm not a fan of contracting some disease from pig intestine. We were planning on going out to plant tobacco but we spent the rest of the morning sitting around as our host walked around town finding people to buy the rest of the pig pieces. During the morning he sold the whole thing, which was good for him, not so good for us. We still had a few pieces of the pig that were left that no one really wanted to buy. This became our lunch/dinner. So for lunch we had a lovely meal of spiced pig liver and some part of the stomach that was mixed in with a lot of fat. Dinner was even better when we got to eat pig head and the other part of the stomach, which was surprisingly different than the part we ate for lunch. By the time we got out to the field I was feeling great since I was filled with nutritious food. We spent a few hours planting tobacco, which consisted of M_ leveling out rows with a rake, myself going behind him and digging holes with a hoe, and then our host sticking in the plant and covering it with dirt. It was a lot of work but we got to spend some time talking to him. We actually got into a good 30 minute talk with him and his wife and got to do quite a bit of sharing. They were asking some good questions and were very interested. He has heard before but he still had some questions and things he wanted to think about. Later that night around the fire in the kitchen we had a chance to share with a couple of other people that were in his family. You can ask all sorts of questions as an interested tourist and they always respond with questions back.

Over the Mountain and through the woods

So it has been a little crazy today. I did sleep through the night, 12 hours to be exact (10pm-10 am) and managed to wander around Old Town for a while and then find lunch on my own. A lot of the tricks for getting around and communicating without being able to speak the language are starting to come back to me. This afternoon my friend M_ and I were planning on taking a bus out to the brother of a friend's house so that we could help them out in the field and I can take a few notes on what all goes on out in the villages. I am getting four hours of credit on my environmental degree for this, and while the department head is amazingly flexible on what I do, I would kind of like to learn a little bit about environmental issues while I'm here. So back to the bus ride... Turns out there was no bus ride; however there was a cargo truck ride. In order to save us money our friend's brother arranged for us to hitch a ride in a cargo truck. So M_ and I piled in with 6 locals and a baby. There wasn't really a lot of space and turns out the guys we were riding with were chain smokers (just like everyone else out here). It was definitely an adventure. The road we went on took us up through the mountains and even though the village was probably only 30 miles away it took us a little over 3 hours to get there. It didn't help that only the first 1/3 of the road was paved and the rest was complete mud. It is the rainy season up here so it rains a few hours every day. There were several times where we thought we were going to get stuck but that truck just kept going through the mud like a champ. Even though it was very uncomfortable it is probably best that we took the cargo truck because the extra weight helped keep us from getting stuck. We passed several cars on the road that were stuck up to the axles in mud. We got to the house and took the grand tour of the place. It is a traditional N. style house. Basically these things are built sort of like forts where the main thing is an open air courtyard in the middle. Around the sides of the couryard there are rooms that are built into the walls and the place is usually 2 stories high. The one we are staying at isn't the most sanitary place ever. Actually it is pretty gross. Inside the courtyard there are dogs, chickens, cats and all sorts of things just running around. Back behind the house you walk through some dirt, take about 6 steps up to a landing and there is the outhose. My gameplan for the next 4 days is to figure out how to avoid this outhouse at all costs. You walk about 10 yards past the outhouse and you are at the field that we're going to be working. We went and looked at the field right after we got there and the scenery is AMAZING. Green mountains as high as you can see into the clouds and there is a valley that extends for miles. On the way back to the house M_ started freaking out because he stepped in poop (and not the animal kind). Our friend that we're staying with was like "oh yeah, one of the kids thinks it is funny to poop on the path." When we got back to the house we helped corner and kill a chicken and then we were eating it 2 hours later. That is going to be one of the biggest challenges to being out here. Basically if food is offered to you, you have to eat it. I've done a little bit of stuff in the villages but nothing quite like this. I've learned that the trick is to eat slow. Because I'm a foot taller than everyone here they think I can eat a lot more (and usually I can, but not when it is chicken innerds). So we sucked it up for dinner and had our pot of boiled chicken parts. I use the term parts losely because while the chicken was in parts, the whole thing was in the pot in some form or another. Another strange thing that we hadn't counted on is the amount of people that are here. We were planning on staying with a small family of four but turns out there are like thirty-something people here. It turns out that our friend is renting out all the extra space to these road workers who are doing construction just down the road. All of these workers are from different parts of the country and they have their entire families here with them. It is kind of bad because it is harder to get to have alone time to talk to people but it is also good because there are now a lot more people that we can talk to.

The Arrival

Well it is officially the end of day one, or two, or three, depending on how you look at it. I'm still not totally sure what day it is. My watch says May 15th, but somewhere across the international date line I never saw yesterday. And speaking of watches, I forgot to pack my good running watch before I left the states. I remembered Tuesday before I left so I ran and picked up a $7 Wal-mart special thinking that it just has to last me a few weeks. Turns out it only lasted 6 hours. The stupid thing didn't even make it out of the DFW airport before it just flickered out. Luckily once I got here my friend M_ and I went and picked up another one (which also cost $7, so a fair trade I guess). The flight over wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. The flight from L.A. to Hong Kong was still 14 1/2 hours but my travel agent is a genius and got me a seat at the back of the plane. I discovered that on the last 3 rows of a Boeing 747 there are only 2 chairs on the row next to the window instead of the normal 3. They stagger the chairs and this means that there is a good foot and a half gap between the window seats and the side of the airplane. Because I was on the next to last row I could stretch out my legs for the entire flight. So, other than not being able to talk to anyone for 14 hours, the guy next to me didn't speak English, I can't really complain. I got to catch 3 movies: The Bucket List, The Golden Compass, and Dan in Real Life. The first and last one were good, the middle one... not so much. A few flights later and I found myself at my final destination. I met a couple guys in the L.A. airport that were headed over here also and we actually took the same connection out of Hong Kong. Luckily I stayed around with the guys to pick up their luggage because mine came off the plane also, so I'm pretty sure it would still be lost over Asia somewhere if I hadn't grabbed it. Once I got in I was picked up by my friend here and we went and exchanged some money and ran a few errands, such as getting a watch. I got an invite to his house for dinner and got to hang out with his family, and a few other friends that are over here. It was good to catch up. I still don't know a lot of the schedule for being over here. I do know that tomorrow we are heading out to a remote village or four days. It should be an adventure. One of my friends warned me about culture shock being out there. She said she spent a few days out in one of the villages and it was pretty rough. So we'll see what happens. I'm thinking that this trip will be a lot different than when I was here 3 years ago. There will be a lot of solo time. Speaking of which, I still have no idea how I'm going to find lunch tomorrow. I need to get some rest and try and get over jet lag. It has been a long day (or three) so I'm hoping that I can sleep through the night.

The trip

Ok so I'm backdating a little bit but a lot of people have been asking me a ton of questions about the trip over to Asia. So in order to save time, and keep myself from going crazy answering the same 3 or 4 questions over and over again, I have decided to just write up a quick blog every day or so about what has been going on. I've actually been here for a few days but I had some down time and this blog idea hit me and I decided to post a few thing from journal entries. I figured that since a lot of people back home were helping me go on this trip I should provide a way for them to know what has been going on. For those of you who don't know I'm going to be spending the next 3 weeks in Asia doing some backpacking and helping out some people who are living over here. Some of the stuff is kind of sensitive so I'm not going into locations and names and things, so it'll just have to be abbreviations or nicknames. I don't know if I'll be able to update this every day, but I am going to try. There will be some times where I won't have access to a computer but I'll try and post whenever I get back and I'll backdate a few whenever possible. Everyone who has been shooting me emails, messages and postings please continue to do so. I'll try and write back as I have time, but if nothing else check in with this thing to keep in the loop of what is going on.