Luang Prabang and Back

Vang Vieng

Laos Day 2 (Pakse)

Laos Day 1 (Pakse)

Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom Temple.

Kuala Lumpur

After a day of delays, being stuck in Chinese airports and trying to convince airlines that it is their job to give me a refund, I've finally made it to Malaysia. I'm running on about two hours of sleep and have to get up at 3am to make it to the airport to do it all over again tomorrow.

Vacation

So I'm going to be gone on vacation for the next two weeks. Since I haven't had time to update this blog, and I seriously doubt I'll be taking time to sit down and write it on my trip, I'm going to try and take some videos and then post them on here either while I'm on the trip or once I get back. Enjoy.

Harvest Time

It is officially corn harvest time here. To be more accurate, it was last few weeks. Four out of our five corn plots have been harvested. There was a little bit lost in translation with our local partners so a few of them have mixed up the different varieties of corn. It is hard for us to get solid data from those plots, but they can all tell us which kind grew the best, which is the most important thing for them. As I'm about to head into November I can already tell it is going to be a crazy month. The next few weeks are going to be spent in class or out in the villages. Yesterday afternoon I spent the day with one of our farmers after he had harvested everything. We ended up looking at corn for about ten minutes and then spent an hour just sitting around the fire having a great conversation. I constantly have to keep reminding myself that really is what it is all about. It is amazing to me how something as simple as corn can open so many doors. We still have four more villages to visit over the next couple of weeks and hopefully there will be similar experiences. Things here are starting to cool off some so I'll also be out taking care of our coffee and getting it ready for winter. Because the coffee is still young and we're not sure how it will do with the cold here we're going to take some precautions to make sure it doesn't freeze. It shouldn't be a lot of extra work, but it will take some time. Between the agricultural things I also have a friend coming out to visit for a few days this next week. We were going to try and go skiing up in Tibet (yeah... we can do that here), but it is still too early in the season. Instead I think I'm going to put him to work and go out and winterize our coffee. I figure that since he's stuck in a city of a couple of million all year round he would enjoy some time working out in the mountains. I'm also going to do some traveling over Thanksgiving. I have a little bit of vacation saved up so my roommate and I are going to travel through South East Asia before he heads back to the Philippines. He used to work on a coffee plantation in Laos, so we'll be spending a few days there looking at their operation and enjoying some VERY fresh cups of coffee. There are also a few more stops on the trip, but I'll save the details for later.

Mountains

Over the past few days I've been out mountain climbing with some friends. There is a mountain a few hours away that is 17,707 feet. It isn't a very technical climb, but once you factor in the snow and elevation it definitely isn't a walk in the park. Actually I climbed it about this time last year with some friends, but this year we didn't make it to the top. The weather didn't exactly cooperate. The hike is broken up into two days. On day one we hiked from the village at the base of the mountain up to Base Camp (13,500 ft). Day two is the hike from Base Camp up to the peak and then back down. About an hour into the hike the first day it started raining on us. It was a VERY long trip though the mud up to Base Camp. The trip there last year took us about six hours. This year it took us over eight. We also didn't make it in before dark. I'm sure we were looking pretty ragged when we finally made it to Base Camp. And I'm also sure that freeze dried chicken breast never tasted so good as it did that night. Day two we decided to take a rest day and hiked over to a high alpine lake. The weather continued to worsen also. The lake wasn't so much fun considering that it was about four and a half hours in rain and mud. And when it wasn't raining it was hailing or snowing. After spending a few hours sitting by the fire drying out all of our gear we heard stories from some of the other climbers that there was a lot of snow all the way up to the peak. Last year the weather was about perfect for me and it still took around four hours to reach the top. This year there was waist deep snow the entire trek to the peak, and it would have taken at least six to seven hours to reach the top. After talking to our guide he encouraged us to not make a summit attempt. Considering that none of us wanted to spend ten hours hiking through waist deep snow (and considering that two people died up there last week) we decided to just blame it on the weather and come back down. On our final day before we headed down the weather cleared, but the damage had already been done with fresh snow everywhere. It made for some great views and pictures on the way down.

Back to School

Well I have officially started my last semester of language school. I'm pretty excited about it. More correctly, I'm excited about the LAST part in 'last semester of language school'. Language learning really isn't my favorite thing to study. I do enjoy the conversational aspect of it. I have been able to spend a lot more time with local friends this month and it has been great being able to have more indepth conversations, even if the topic is something simple like making plans. I have classes four days a week this semester, and they are all in the mornings. Actually, our college campus has moved to a new location that is several miles outside of town. They have allowed all of the foreign students to continue to study at the old campus, which is a definite blessing. The new campus would take me well over half an hour to ride my bike to. My classes are about the same every semester. One is a grammar/vocabulary class, one is a conversational class, but this semester we're also learning local proverbs. I've tried them out on several of my local friend and they know them all. Honestly they don't make a lot of sense to me, even after they are explained. I figure it is a good insight into culture though. Class is the big exciting thing going on at the moment. This next week I have some friends coming out and we'll be doing some traveling around and looking at coffee and corn. Harvest time is coming up soon for the corn also. Between school and everything else I'm sure it will be a busy time.

The End of Summer

So summer has come and gone out here. To be honest, I'm kind of thankful that it is over. I'm getting tired of monsoon season. For the last few weeks the rain has come and gone, but it always seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times. Here lately it seems to rain only on the days where I try to go out to the village and from about 5-7pm (the hours I try to go and play basketball). So I'm looking forward to a little more sunshine. As strange as it is I'm also looking forward to going back to school. I have a lot more conversations these days, but at the same time I feel like my language has kind of plateaued over the past month or so.

Even through the rain there have been some good things happen this week. I went out with my friend that is studying language with me and we spent some time in Old Town. We went way past all the tourist shops to where locals actually live and spent some time talking to some old ladies. There was a group of people washing vegetables in a stream so we stopped to talk for a while. One older lady was very talkative so I talked to her for about twenty minutes. Most of the conversation revolved around how she thought Jared was my wife when we walked up. It is amazing how a 6'1'' 175lb. white guy can be mistaken for a girl because he has long hair. It didn't stop me from making fun of him though. Quickly after she found out that he in fact was not my wife the conversation took the same turn that all conversations out here with old women; she told me that she had a daughter my age.

I've also had some time to reconnect with some friends over the past few weeks. Many of them have just graduated from college and have been very involved with their jobs. I guess the newness of work is starting to wear off and they are finding time to go out and do things once again. Hopefully this fall we'll all have more time to go out. School also hasn't started yet. My school is moving to a new campus and the mayor decided to make an announcement that classes would be at the new campus this fall. Well, construction was delayed with rainy season so the campus isn't finished and there is mud everywhere. Because of this they pushed the start of the semester back a few weeks and then announced that only half of the school (fortunately not the foreign students) will be attending the new campus. So it is a win-win situation. I won't have a forty-minute bike ride to class every day and I have an extra two weeks of summer.

Party!

So we've just finished having a party out here. I had this random thought on Tuesday morning that I should invite all of my friends that I play basketball with to come over and cook up some American food. I wasn't sure if anyone would actually come, but I figured it was worth a shot. So most of this week I've been going out to the basketball court to play ball and talk up this party. Like with anything involving a bunch of twenty year old guys, if you mention free food there will be a decent turn out. We had fourteen guys show up, so it was pretty good.

The actual night of the party was a little hectic though. I had been getting things together for most of the day. It poured down rain all day, so that made for several fun bike rides across town. Everyone was supposed to come over at 7pm, so I fired up the grill in the house at around 5:30. Surprise, no gas. It turns out they have been working on the main gas pipeline in our apartment complex and shut it off for a few days (starting at 5pm today). So I managed to go and buy a large propane bottle and rig it up to my stove in the kitchen. By the time I got home from that there were ten guys waiting at my door; go figure they all show up an hour early. So most of my night was spent cooking, and they all took off early and at exactly the same time, but I think it was a great 'door opening' opportunity. I actually think we're going to try and have a cookout once a month or so. I'll make sure and write about how the next one goes.

Rainy Season

It is rainy season here. Usually it lasts from mid-May until the end of August. Last summer I was here too and it rained, but there was not nearly as much rain as there has been this year. I think that over the past month there have maybe been two clear days; that is until this week. The rain has finally started to clear out some, and that means that I'm getting to go outside more. The rain really does change life out here. Back in the U.S. if it rains you just get in your car and deal with it. It might slow you down some and may inconvenience you some, but the rain isn't all that big of a thing. Here everyone has bikes or walks and all social activity is done outside. So when it rains here it really changes my day to day life. This past month it has been hard to connect with people, play basketball and go out to villages.

The rain cleared out on Monday though and I've been able to go to several villages this past week. Monday I went out to the south end of town to fertilize some corn with a couple of friends. I think that field is cursed. We planted it about a month and a half ago and it poured down rain the entire time we were out there. So when we went back on Monday the skies were clear and we left all of our rain gear in the truck. About halfway through fertilizing the field the clouds came rolling down the ridge (which we were right under). My friend ran back to the car to grab the rain gear, but it was raining when he was only 2/3 of the way there. I got soaked and spent the next couple of hours soaking wet.

Monday was the last rainy day here though. Tuesday I spent the entire day with friends out in the village. We had a great time getting to catch up with some people out there. I also went out yesterday too. My next big project for this upcoming semester is to try and find a location and set up an ag training center for locals here. It will be a place where we can have a few classrooms, land to try out new farming techniques and some places to raise pigs and other animals. Ideally we'll be able to bring locals in, train them, and then send them back out to their villages. So my roommate and I have been going out once a week specifically to talk to people to see if we can find some land to rent. We were out doing that yesterday and my roommate got a phone call from a friend in his class. His friend's family owns a big orphanage out here and he wanted us to come out and do some things with the kids for a few hours. It was a lot of fun and there are about three hundred kids there. They are wanting me to come back and teach basketball once every few weeks, so I think I might be spending a little more time out there. I'm sure I'll get some good pictures over the next few months from being out there.

Way Out in the Village

So random story for the past couple of weeks:

I was out yesterday with a friend and we were scoping out a fairly remote village. The last time that I know anyone had even been out that direction was 2001, and that was basically just to plot it on the map so we know it exists. Actually as far as anyone had ever been was the larger village, and we went about two hours further than that. We did stop in the larger village for lunch on our trip out though. When we stopped for lunch we got out of the truck and immediately these two local guys came up and wanted to talk to us. We kind of figured that since we were so far out they were just amazed to see white people, but it turns out one of the guys was on his way home from college. He had been staying in the city I live in for a few days with his aunt and was just now heading back to see his family for a month. It also turns out that he spoke good English, which also never happens out in the village. So when we met this guy he started talking to us, mentioned that he was going to the same village we were going to and asked if we could give him a ride so he could practice his English. So we said sure and took him to lunch before hitting the road.

While we were at lunch we started talking and it turns out that his aunt lives in a house right behind my apartment complex. I told him that he should come over the next time that he is in town, and he said that he likes to go to my apartment complex to play basketball. He said, "I went there a couple of days ago and there was this foreigner playing basketball." Since I'm one of two foreigners in my apartment complex (and the other one wasn't playing basketball that day) I filled him in that was me. He was pretty amazed. I told him that maybe it was a divine appointment.

The rest of the day out was good. It was a couple more hours out to his village. We had some great conversations along the way. He also lives next to an ancient stone village built into the side of the mountain. It is supposedly a big tourist attraction, but after having been there I've realized that it is WAY too far out of the way for anyone to go to. We went to see it and it took a five hour drive (two of which were on dirt mountain roads) and then another half hour to hike down to the village because there was no road. It was kind of interesting but I think if I'd had been going out there just to see it I'd have been VERY disappointed after the long ride.

My friend wanted us to spend the night with him (which we almost had to do because it was getting so late), but since we had things to do today back in town we needed to leave. He has my number and knows where I live so hopefully we'll get together and play some basketball this next month when he is heading back to school.

Coffee!

Well we've finally got some coffee in the ground. It has been a huge ordeal. Somehow whenever I look at a project on paper it seems so much easier than it ends up being.

Our coffee had to come from an area about ten-hours south of here, and because there is no infrastructure, we had to drive down there and pick it up ourselves. You also can't just google 'coffee seedling supplier' and come up with anything either, so it took a lot of phone calls and chasing down leads to finally find a guy willing to sell to us. Then it took a good two weeks of delays for him to actually get the seedlings bagged and ready for us to pickup. It is kind of strange that you can call a guy four times and tell him that you are coming on a certain day, but he doesn't believe you until you actually show up. Long story short, we picked up our coffee last week and have been eagerly trying to get it in the ground.

We have two test plots for our coffee. One of the guys that is letting us use his land is a friend of a friend, and so I don't know him all that well. We went out and dug holes to plant the coffee at his place last week. When I say we dug holes I mean we dug HOLES. These things are a good 1 1/2 feet wide by 1 1/2 feet deep. After digging one hundred of those with a hoe, I had no problem getting to sleep that night. We had his field all prepared so that when we went back yesterday we could just add manure, put in the seedlings, cover it up, add water, and go home.

It turns out that wasn't what happened. After we finished up our second coffee test plot yesterday (which had no hiccups by the way), we went back to our friends to plant the coffee. I figured it would take a couple of hours and we could be back home by dark. We arrived and ended up having to wait on the guy to bring the manure. While we were sitting there a lot of the villagers were coming by and talking about how we were growing coffee. Because I can speak the local language I could hear them talking about how they were planning on stealing the coffee after we planted it in the ground. So that was a little bit of a problem. We ended up deciding to move the test plot from his field (a fifteen minute walk away) to some land behind his house because it would be safer (translation = I get to go back on Monday and dig another 100 holes). This will end up being better because they guy was truly worried that people would steal his coffee and he would have no income for this next year.

It doesn't make sense why people would even steal his coffee. They can't eat it. They don't know what to do with it. And they can't sell it because we're going to be the only buyers in the area. So basically they would just steal it for no reason. This is something that we've found quite a bit. People out here are generally just mean, especially in places that we don't have any friends or relationships established. People have no problem stealing, even if there seems to be no benefit. In all actuality, they are hurting themselves. We explained that if the coffee does well then we'll come back and they can all grow coffee, which is what we're hoping for, and then they can all make money off of it, but if they steal it then we won't know if it works and can't help them.

After all of this it worked out well. We ended up having to wait on the manure guy anyway, and we wouldn't have gotten to plant yesterday after he arrived. We needed dry manure, because wet manure gets hot as it dries and will burn the plants, and he assured us five times that the manure was dry. It turns out that when he got there it was incredibly fresh and wouldn't have worked. Our joke was that he was so late because he was waiting on the cow to poop so he could catch it, put it in the truck and drive over.

Long story short, we didn't plant yesterday and will be heading back out there for a long day on Monday. It worked out well though because we were able to spend the entire afternoon and eat dinner with this man and his family, and we'll have another opportunity to be with him on Monday. That really is what these projects are about. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself of that. I want to just get them in the ground and have them up and running, but I should be more thankful for the times where I can spend talking to the people there. I have a feeling I'll need to be reminded about that again this upcoming Monday.

Basketball, Farming and Class

It seems like all I've done for the past couple of weeks are basketball, farming and class. To be honest, these past couple of weeks have been some of the busiest since I've been out here. Through the busyness, it has been a great time to meet a lot of people. I've had a group of friends from Oklahoma come out to teach basketball clinics and play in a few exhibition games. They ended up being one player short, which meant that I had to play. I'm starting to realize that I'm getting too old to schedule five basketball games on top of everything else I have to do in a given week. So I'm planning on taking a little bit of down time next week and trying to recuperate a little bit.

On top of basketball I've been doing a lot with our corn test plots. My roommate and I have spent a weekend out in a village with a farmer that lives all by himself. His wife was killed a few years back in a landslide, and he doesn't have any other family in the area. His daughter used to 'go out' a lot, but her husband didn't like it so he would beat her. Eventually he got drunk and broke her leg and now she walks with a very bad limp. I have seen her once, but because of everything they have moved to another village and now the man lives all by himself with no family around. One of the great benefits of our corn test plots is that I have a chance to go out and spend time with this guy. We also have finally gotten all five of our test plots in the ground; so no more corn planting! The next thing that we are about to do is coffee. We're going to try and get the seedlings this upcoming week so that we'll have everything ready to plant before the end of the month. We have everything lined up, but knowing things out here there will probably be setbacks.

The other thing that has been going on is a huge school performance. Our school is trying to become a university instead of just a teacher training college, so they are in the middle of the accreditation process. You would think that would mean most of the process would be based on academics and things like that, but somehow the major factor in the school becoming accredited is a performance in front of the officials. Because everyone thinks it is great that a foreigner can speak the local language, a few others and myself got up and sang in traditional clothing in front of the entire school. It was kind of fun, but I am glad to be finished with it. It earned me some major points with the local officials though.

The End of May

I realize that I'm only getting around to posting one entry this month. Sorry about that. I was gone during the middle of the month. My family came out to visit so I flew up to Beijing and I spent a week with them and some friends that live in the area. We then spent a full week out here. So I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and write.

The trip to Beijing was a lot of fun. We saw all of the big sights and I got to eat some good Mexican food. Once we were back in this part of the world we traveled around some and saw a lot of the local things here. After everyone went home I've been busy with class and trying to get more corn planted. We have four test plots in the ground and are planting one more later this week. Then it is on to coffee... We have almost everything together for the coffee test plots, except for the minor detail of finding someone who will sell us coffee seedlings. I've talked to a few people and I think we're on the right path to getting it all together. Hopefully that will come together in the next week and a half so we can start planting towards the end of June.

The ag projects have opened a lot of doors for us already. In one of the villages we have planted corn for three years, and every time we go out there people welcome us into their homes and love to talk to us. In one of our other villages it is the first time that we have been out there. We are working with a man who lives alone because he wife was killed several years back when a boulder fell on her. He loves having us come over for company, and because we have to check the corn every two to three weeks, we have a lot of chances to sit around the fire with him. My roommate and I just spent this last weekend at his house. And, while the barking dogs and flea that lived in our beds were a little annoying, it was a great weekend out in the village.

This upcoming week we have about ten college students coming out from Oklahoma. Most of them are basketball players and we're all going to be playing basketball tournaments and teaching clinics for the next two weeks. On top of this I'll be planting corn and visiting some villages. It'll be a busy two weeks, but it is always fun when people come out for a while. Hopefully they'll be able to get out to some villages and really experience life here.

The End of April

I can't believe that April is already over. Time out here is flying by. May is going to fly by quickly too. My family is coming out to visit so two weeks in May is going to be spent traveling and showing them around. The past couple of weeks have been a little crazy. The end of the month is always pretty crazy here, but I've also adjusted my class schedule. A couple of weeks ago I pitched the idea of moving our only Friday class to another day. It turns out that everyone in the class and my teacher agreed that it would be easier, so now I only have classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Having a four day weekend is great for getting out to villages and traveling. Having twelve hours of language class crammed into three days means I have a headache by Wednesday, but four days on the weekend is more than enough time to recuperate. It also means that on Thursdays I can go out and do planting and stay for the weekend if I need to.

Over the past couple of weeks we have still been taking our corn trips on Thursdays. Last week we went a couple of hours away and planted a corn test plot. We also found two good places to try and plant coffee. The climate there still isn't ideal (they get a few days of frost every year) but it is good enough for us to set up a test plot and see what happens. Hopefully we can get the coffee test plots up and going in the next month or two. Really we won't need to plant the coffee until June, so we have a little bit of time. We need to get a lot of things together for it though, so we have plenty to do.

I went back to check on our first two corn test plots yesterday, and after two weeks we've got corn growing. About 80-90% of the seeds have germinated and have started to come up. I think that most of the other ones will within the next week. So the corn is looking good and our local farmers are taking good care of them. I spent the afternoon yesterday with one of the farmers eating lunch and just sitting around and talking. It was a great time. Anyway, I've got to run. I have a ton of things to do today.

Planting Season is Here

So planting season is officially underway out here. It means a lot of trips out to the village and being incredibly busy. It is a good busy though. I enjoy the village life. You wake up, go out to the field, and sit around the fire in the kitchen during the middle of the afternoon. It is pretty slow and boring, but there are a lot of opportunities to sit around and hang out with people. Last week my roommate and I spent the weekend down on the border of Laos looking at coffee. Some people had planted a few hundred plants that were dying. My roommate worked on a coffee plantation for a year so he is the local expert. The weekend there was fun, but it was HOT. I've realized how nice it is to be here where it is sunny and 70 degrees every day. We spent most of our time out in a village on the side of a mountain. It is amazing how just within a couple of hundred miles the culture is entirely different. Instead of being in the mountains and living in mud brick homes, we were in the middle of a jungle with people lived in wooden huts on stilts. The weekend was fun and I think we helped solve their coffee problem. We're still in the process of trying to find some coffee locations out here. We've looked in a couple of villages last month, but either the soil or the climate wasn't right at the locations.

We're also in the middle of corn planting season out here. Almost everyone here plants corn every year. We're working with a grant to do research on which corn varieties will perform the best in our location. Basically we get some land from a farmer in a village, plant nine different varieties, he plants his row next to ours the local way of doing it, and then at harvest we weigh the different varieties and see which one yields the most corn. It isn't rocket science, but it is an easy way to help out villagers (they can keep the corn since they let us use their land), and it also provides us ways to get out there for the next six months. So yesterday we went out and planted two different test plots in neighboring villages. One of the farmers who let us use his land was actually one of the guys I stayed with back in January. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with him, and I'll get to spend the next six months going to visit him. If anyone ever tells you that you can easily plant two fields in one day they are lying. We worked pretty much from sun-up to sun-down and barely finished before we ran out of daylight. We got it all done though. I think the game plan is that every Thursday for the next month we are going to be traveling to villages and planting corn and looking for coffee test plots. Anyway, that's about all that is going on out here. It is busy, but a lot of fun.

Corn and Coffee

Well we haven't actually started planting corn or coffee yet, but we're working on it. Actually it is already becoming more work than I was hoping for. Finding test plot locations has been kind of tricky. I don't think that corn is going to be a problem, however the coffee thing is ending up being a lot harder to find good locations for. For good coffee you want high elevation (which we have) and no frost (which some places have here) and good soil (which other places have). The hard part is finding places that have all three. We're still looking but the clock is starting to tick down. We wouldn't need to plant the coffee until this summer, but if we don't talk to some farmers about it soon they will have already planted things on the land. So hopefully we'll be talking to some guys in the next couple of weeks. My roommate and I are also going to head down far south to the border to help out some other people with their coffee planting. It'll be a good opportunity to learn some things and to help some people out. So that is really about it. The past couple of weeks have been busy with traveling out to villages and when I'm in town trying to keep up with class and other responsibilities. A friend and I have been meeting with some local guys for the past couple of months. Things are going well and two of them are actually going swimming this next week. There are still a couple of other guys in the group who are dragging their feet on some things, but they are asking a lot of good questions. So in looking ahead for this next month I'm probably going to be out trying to find some test plot areas and planting a lot of corn. We've got to plant about six different fields, so that'll take up some time. It'll be good to be out in the villages though. I get sick of being in the city after a few days. Actually I think it is mostly because of the traffic here. There aren't a lot of cars, but no one pays attention to anything so every day I'm dodging someone who almost runs me over. Village life is much safer, with the exception of the occasional parasite. I'll take a parasite over traffic most days. I'll keep everyone posted on the village trips over the next month.

Going to the Farm

So I know it has been a few weeks since I've posted something on here. School has officially started back up; however I have only been to three classes in the past two and a half weeks. The first week of class I came down with a little case of the Giardia, so I wasn't doing a whole lot outside of my apartment. I think it was something that I picked up while I was in the village but it took about a week to finally catch up with me. Anyway, it knocked me out for a few days. I was better by the end of the week, which is good because I needed to go to class, and I went on a nine hour road trip on that Saturday. I was starting to worry that I was still going to be sick during the trip, but I was completely better by then. Last week was spent down on a farm doing some ag training. This is the second time that I've been, and I really enjoy the trips down there. This time we focused on methods to raising chickens, corn and a little bit about soybeans. It is a huge skill to know these kinds of things out here because everyone is a farmer in the villages. So we've applied for a grant that is going to pay us to establish corn test plots in villages. Over the next few weeks we are going to have to set up these test plots and then spend the summer going out and checking them and collecting data. All of this means a lot of time out in the village for me. I'm actually looking forward to it. We're also looking for a few good places to establish come coffee test plots. My filipino roommate is sort of a coffee growing expert, so we're going to try and get that all going in the next couple of months. It is a lot to coordinate, so we'll see how it all goes. Anyway, that's about all that has been going on out here. I'll be traveling to about half a dozen villages over the next couple of weeks to try and get these test plot locations squared away. Other than that it is going to class and trying to keep up with my normal responsibilities in town. It'll be busy, but it is fun.

Back from the village (again)

So I've just realized that I've spent most of my Winter Break out in villages. I'm not going to complain, it is more fun than staying in town. Actually I was about to go crazy from boredom before I went out to this last village. Chinese New Year here is something that you just have to see to believe. Even being in a smaller city, there were fireworks for a solid hour before and after midnight. Actually, there were fireworks the entire week before and after New Year too. There were a few times where I felt like I was in a war zone. All of the streets were deserted and you would randomly hear fireworks going off in the distance. Everywhere closed on Saturday and didn't open back up until the end of the next week. So I decided to go and visit my friend in a village for the week. I tried to leave on Monday, but when I went to the bus station, after talking to the driver earlier that morning, I found out the driver went home because not very many people showed up for the bus and he didn't want to drive out on the holiday. So I didn't leave until Tuesday. The week in the village was a lot of fun. I think I met about half of the village while I was there. One day we went to around nine houses and I ate at six of them. By the fifth meal of the afternoon I felt pretty miserable. There is only so much blood sausage and liver that you can eat in a day. It was a great trip though. The village sits around 2,000 meters elevation and it is in the middle of one of the deepest gorges in the world. On both sides of the village there are two 6,000 meter mountains. While I was there we got the only rain of the winter and there was a ton of snow on the mountains. It made for an incredible view. I've also got a few invitations to come back, and hopefully this will be a possible location for some coffee test plots.

Back from Vacation

I'm back from a week and a half down in Thailand. We talked to a few friends who are working down there and were able to find some inexpensive places to stay during the trip. It was a lot of fun. We had a place that was right on the beach and were short walk from some of the best rock climbing in the world. The island that we were staying on is only accessible by boat so there were no cars or bikes or anything like that. It was a fun week. I got to do some rock climbing, SCUBA diving (I was about five feet away from a 7-foot leopard shark), kayaking, riding elephants, and some other fun stuff. It was a good week. It has been a little bit of a shock coming back. I am definitely glad to be back, but it seems a little colder then when I left. Spring should be right around the corner though. This next week is Chinese New Year and I hear that it is going to be a huge party. Most everything will be closed down for a about a week, so I'm thinking I need to get an invite out to stay with a friend in a village or otherwise I'm going to starve. One of my friends has given me an invite so I think I'm going to try and stay with him for a few days. I'll make sure and keep you all posted.

Back from the Village

Well I survived my time out in the village. It was actually a really good trip. The village leader that I am staying with is a guy in his mid-40's. Usually he is out chopping down trees, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him this week. His father is the former village head and he and I spent most of our time together. He is a great older guy. I can see why they are the leaders of this village because, as opposed to most people out here, they are busy most of the time. Them being busy was great for me because I had things to do almost every day. Most mornings we would wake up and eat breakfast at around 9:30 and then go out around 10am. It sounds kind of late, which it is, but the reason is because we were so high in the mountains that the sun wouldn't come up until then. And it was REALLY cold if the sun wasn't up. So during the morning we would basically hike a little over a mile to the other side of the mountain so we could find some trees to chop down. Uncle He, the former village leader, and I would chop down a few trees, strip off the branches from the top, tie them all together and then haul them home so we could feed the goats with them. And then most days we would go out and do the exact same thing in the afternoon. It is kind of a lot of work just to feed some goats. I didn't mind though. I got to chop down a few trees and it gave me something to do. Most of the time village life is pretty boring, but this week was good because it was different. I was also stretched with language quite a bit. I would read some in the afternoons and Uncle He would always ask what I was reading. It turns out he can't read so I had to tell him about it. There were a few times where I had to use some charades, but overall I think he understood what I was talking about. I've posted the video from week three from our village wedding trip here. This next week Jared and I are taking off for a little vacation down South. Nothing like going from about 9,000-feet in the cold mountains to sunny warm beaches.

Going to the Village

So the village thing has finally come together (I think). I've got somewhere to go this week anyway. I'm actually heading out tomorrow afternoon and I'll be back... I'm not really sure when. Hopefully I'll be back on Friday, but I might end up staying out there until Monday-ish. I'm going to be in a village about an hour outside of town on the side of a mountain. I've done some ag work out here before and so I'm staying with the village head. You would think that the village leader would have a nice place, but that isn't the case. I went out there yesterday and talked to everybody and I'm going to be roughing it a little bit for the next few days. It probably won't be too bad, but it is going to be cold. Last night, even before the sun went down, it was getting pretty chilly. I think it is about 1,000 feet above the valley, so the weather is a little bit harsher there. I hit it off with the grandpa that lives at the house though, so I'm sure we'll be doing a lot together this next week. They have a lot of goats in this village and Grandpa was telling me that I can help him watch the goats during the day. So at least I'll have a little something to do, and I might even come away knowing a little bit about goat ranching (if that is even a term. . .). The people there are really nice though, so I'm sure it'll be a good week. Hopefully this will open up a few doors for me to come back and start up some ag projects in the coming months. I think I'm going to start hitting the ag thing pretty hard once February gets here. I've got a friend coming out to live with me and he has an ag degree and worked on a coffee plantation for a few years. So I'm sure we'll find all kinds of things to get into out here. The game plan is that we're going to get some high elevation coffee test plots going and maybe some pigpens and whatever else we can come up with. It should be fun. Oh, and here is video 2 from the wedding.

Village Wedding

So I survived the village wedding. It was REALLY COLD though. I think it was somewhere around 20 degrees in my room every night. So it feels good to be living back in the valley again. It has actually been really nice here since I've been back. It gets pretty cold here at night, but for living at about 7,500 feet at the beginning of January, it really isn't too bad. Life out in the village was actually a lot more fun than it usually is. Normally in the village I catch up on a lot of reading and usually just sit around, which is all that is left to do if you don't smoke, drink, or gamble. There is actually a lot going on in villages during planting or harvest season, but otherwise, just a lot of sitting. The wedding was fun because there was a lot going on by village standards and we had a friend with us who could speak some English. The first day we were there they killed three pigs, so that provided a few hours of entertainment. Other than that we pretty much sat around by the fire, took pictures and shot video. I'm actually going to post a video a week. The link to this last weeks is here. Act fast though because I'm probably not going to leave them up too long. And heads up on this one, it is the pig killing. So if you're partial to bacon you might want to skip out until next weeks. For the rest of break things are a little up in the air. The game plan is that I'm going to live out in the villages some so I can work on language, go on a little vacation, and then start up some ag projects. I'll make sure and post more details when I have them, the problem is that a lot of things are still up in the air. Hopefully it'll come together soon so I can get the village thing knocked out before I head out of country and then I can focus on growing coffee once I get back.