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.