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.