Sorry this is a little late

Okay, so I know I’m a little late on posting. I’m actually post dating this one a few days late. For the record it’s not my fault. The internet has been acting up here. Well, not really the internet but the trick I use on the internet to write on my blog. There is no such thing as free speech here so things like blogs are blocked and, unless you know a trick or two, you can’t access them. So other than having internet issues, it has been a pretty good week out here. I’ve been working with my language tutor a lot over the past week. I have a new tutor and I think that we are making good progress on things. For the first eight weeks that I was out here I was doing a language sprint where I spent 4-5 hours a day working on language. Most of the language study was vocabulary based, so I was learning a lot of words but not really how to communicate. This past week I’ve switched to my language book that I will use at school and it is a lot more conversational based. It has helped out a lot. There have been a lot of ‘ah ha’ moments this past week with language, which is always encouraging. My tutor is a local taxi driver and he speaks a little bit of English. He is very good about pronouncing things and, after I tell him to slow down a few times, he says things slowly. The local language out here is just going to take time to learn. I mean, there are maybe only ten westerners who have ever learned this language and the only one that I know said it took her a year and a half before she became conversational. There are some big payoffs with learning the local language though. The big one is that everyone wants to talk to you. I’ve gotten into a lot of conversations because of language and, once I learn how to speak more and tell some stories, I think this will help out a lot. It is just getting to that point that is going to be hard.

Other than language this week has been about the same as always. It has been a busy week though. In less than a week I’m going to have a new roommate living with me and we will have a lot of people coming out to visit over the next month. I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to get things set up for him and getting things together for his time here. I’ve gotten to do a few fun things though. This last weekend I went out on a bike ride to a small village with a couple of local friends. The village is supposedly where the people here originated and it is right by the mountain. The village wasn’t anything to write home about. It was small and most everything was just a tourist trap. The view of the mountain was great though. It was fun just to get out in the mountains for a while.

One other thing this past week. On Friday I went out with 'A' to eat lunch. There is this restaurant in town that has amazing cheeseburgers. I don't know why it took me three months to finally eat there, but that burger was amazing. I think it would even be really good by American standards. So after lunch she had to go and try to set up some things for a group coming out in a couple of weeks, so I figured I'd go with her so she didn't have to go out to the village alone. The village is sort of in town but not really. It is still in the valley but it is about a fifteen to twenty minute drive out of town. The trip out there is great because there are green mountains all around. We got out to the village and basically found out what we were working on was a dead end, but we decided to go and talk to a lady she knows that runs a small restaurant. And by small restaurant, I mean a hut with an open fire pit and a bunch of tables. So we sat around in there for a little while talking to the lady who runs it and got to set up a few things with her. While we were there it started raining and so we were basically stuck there for another hour until the rain died down. When the rain finally stopped we walked back to the main road, about a mile away, and then tried to find a ride back to town. We stood around trying to get a taxi or hitch hike for about twenty minutes and finally decided to start walking back. After a little ways a cargo truck finally pulled over and let us ride back into town in the back. It was good because it was starting to rain again. So yeah, my free Friday ended up getting pretty full by spending my afternoon stranded out in a small village.

The other big thing this past week is that on Saturday a couple of college guys arrived in town. They are going to be spending the next six months out here. They will be living out in a village for their first month, so please be remembering them. They seem to fit in really well and seem like the kind of guys who are laid back and willing to do anything (after all they did eat pig heart the other night for dinner). It is good to have a couple of other guys around and just more people to hang out with in general. Okay, I’m going to keep this one kind of short because it is going to be a busy week and I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to write next time.

Harvest Time

Okay so first off, it is actually harvest time out here but I haven’t spent any time harvesting. The title is more of a metaphor for what has being going on out here (see below). Second, sorry that I didn’t get around to posting last week. Things have been a little crazy out here. I’ll try and catch everyone up on the happenings of the past few weeks. So a couple of weeks ago I went out with another worker out here and we went and had lunch with the potato man. We call him the potato man because he sells potatoes out at the back gate of my apartment complex. One of the girls who had been here for a couple of years and just went back to the states had been sharing with him for a while and she wanted us to do some follow up. So we went out to talk to him and asked if we could take him out to lunch so that we could talk and practice our language. So we went out to eat lunch and I went over some language stuff with him and then my friend started to share with him. The potato man listened to the entire story and then at the end of it said that he believed it. He actually said that he had been listening to stories that my friend had left him and that he had believed for a while. So we spent some time talking to him and explaining to him what all that meant and what to do next. Towards the end of our conversation his wife came over and things got a little awkward. She doesn’t approve of his decision and I think it is tough for him. So please be thinking of the potato man.

I also went out to eat lunch with my friend Gao. While we were out we started talking about things and it turns out that his best friend, the one that we went out to the lake with about a month ago, had sat down during the week and had shared with him. Gao said that he believed it and so we talked about what all that meant and we had a great day of just getting to talk about things and hang out. At the end of the day I gave him something to read and told him that we should get together and talk about what all he is reading. He seems very interested but he has also mentioned over the past week that he has been very busy and it has been hard to find time for him to read. So be thinking of him and hopefully he will start going deeper with some things.

So other than that the week has just been busy. I met with some friends for about four hours this past Monday and we talked about what all has been going on and what all is coming up. There was a group of people who came to visit from the states and did some great work out here over the past week. At our meeting we looked at pictures of people who have been shared with and believed and talked about each one of them. Over the past week there have been twenty-five people that have joined the family. There are some pretty crazy things going on out here. A lot of times it is hard to see any fruit when you are doing groundbreaking type work with people who have never been worked with before, but when you do see things happen it is great. So it has been a very encouraging week. I’m glad too, because I think we’re going to need it with the month that we have coming up.

July is going to be crazy out here. Basically we have people coming from the states to visit every four or five days throughout the entire month. This means a lot of work and showing people around and helping them get things done. I’m excited about it though. I’m going to have a roommate coming on July 4^th and I’m looking forward to having another guy around. He will be doing the same thing that I did and spending his first two weeks out in a village. So I think July is going to be pretty crazy but I’m looking forward to seeing what all will happen over the next month. There were two college students here last night that I got to spend some time with and it is great just getting to swap stories and talk to people in English. Things are going to be busy, but I also think that things are going to be good.

School Stuff

So I’m a little late on this week’s post. I have good reasons, mainly because I was out on my bike for about ten hours yesterday. So this past week has been a little different. I rolled my ankle landing on a guy’s foot on Monday and haven’t really been able to play basketball all week. It isn’t too bad but it is one of those things that I need to make sure and not play for a couple weeks. So hopefully I’ll be back out on the court sometime next week. Also, monsoon season is picking up even more this past week. It has rained pretty much every evening so a lot of people haven’t been out. So I’ve had a down week of just getting to finish up some language and have spent a few days out at my tutor’s house. I finished up my eight-week language sprint this past week and now I am just doing some review until I find another tutor. I have a few guys that I think can do it, but since it has been raining so much I haven’t been able to track them down. I’m thinking I’ll try and get the new language stuff started back up again around Monday of next week.

I spent my day yesterday getting everything ready to become registered at the school and get my student visa. It is a big process. I spent most of the morning up at the school getting things filled out and then in the afternoon I went to the police station to answer questions and get registered and then made the trip out to the health clinic to make sure I don’t have AIDS. The police station was a little bit of an experience. We went to three different stations until we finally found the right one. Every one we went to told us to go to another, then that one told us to go to another, and then finally we found the right place. That happens a lot here. I spent about an hour at the station; 10 minutes answer questions and 50 minutes waiting (apparently some things here work very similarly to back in the states). Then I rode my bike all the way across town to the health clinic. About out way out there it started to rain and my friend who went with me assured me that it wasn’t much further, and twenty minutes later we were still riding on our bikes. The health clinic was pretty sketchy. Not nearly as sketchy as the hospital but still was a little weird. I only had to have a couple blood tests so it was pretty painless for me. The lady opened up a clean needle and, except for the open vials of blood sitting on the table my arm was on and the fact that her gloves were reused who-knows-how-many-times, it was pretty sanitary.

Today has been another errand day and I also fit in a little language. Tonight I went over to a friend’s house for some homemade Mexican food. I decided to invite one of the guys who speaks English and so both of us, her and her roommate all made some tortillas, salsa, fajitas and then we had some brownies and ice cream for desert. Afterwards we all sat around and played a game of Risk. It was a fun night. I’ve got a pretty full rest of the week too. Tomorrow I’m going to turn in all of my forms for school and then go out with a friend to visit a few people and then on Thursday I’m taking a road trip with a few others to a village on the other side of town. Hopefully on Friday or Saturday another friend and I can make it back to visit the family I got to talk to last week. So there should be enough going on to keep me out of trouble for a while.